PLANT CITY, Fla. — Second-seeded Chattanooga State lost 6-1 to the top-seeded Santa Fe Saints in the losers-bracket final Saturday in the NJCAA Division I softball tournament, before Wallace State of Hanceville, Ala., claimed the national championship with a 5-2 victory over the Gainesville, Fla., team.

Santa Fe had lost to 16th-seeded Spartanburg Methodist in the opening round. Wallace State (69-8) scored two runs in the bottom of the seventh inning of the winners-bracket final Friday night to edge Chattanooga State’s Lady Tigers, 4-3.

As in that game, coach Beth Keylon-Randolph and her Lady Tigers felt they were the victims of questionable umpiring against Sante Fe.

“I know it looks like sour grapes when you lose 6-1, but that score does not indicate how close the game was, and they got a lot of their runs after we thought we had outs that weren’t called,” Keylon-Randolph said. “And we thought we had some runs taken away. There were three plays defensively and three when our kids were called out that we felt were wrong.”

Santa Fe (62-5-1) scored two runs in the third and four in the top of the fifth. Chattanooga State (59-9) scored in the bottom of the seventh on an Amber Janus hit.

“I felt we were the best team down here. We just felt some uncontrollable stuff got the best of us,” Keylon-Randolph said. “But our kids kept battling down to the very last out of the very last game. We beat the national champions (3-0 on Feb. 24) and felt we beat them last night. Our kids did great and I’m proud of them.”

Janus and Morgan Qualls each was 2-for-3 for the Lady Tigers, Janus with a double, and Meagan Masingale tripled after one of the disputed out calls. Courtney Alvarez allowed nine hits in five innings and Brittany Fox allowed one hit in her two closing innings for the Lady Tigers.

Whitney Mills and Kristina Cruz each was 2-for-3 with a double and two RBIs for Santa Fe.